Women, Poverty and Ideology in Asia: Contradictory Pressures, Uneasy Resolutions

251 Pages·1989·13.18 MB·English

by  Haleh Afshar

WOMEN, POVERTY AND IDEOLOGY IN ASIA
Also by Haleh Afshar
*IRAN: A Revolution in Turmoil (editor)
WOMEN, WORK AND IDEOLOGY (editor)
*WOMEN, STATE AND IDEOLOGY (editor)
Also by Bina Agarwal
MECHANISATION IN INDIAN AGRICULTURE
COLD HEARTHS AND BARREN SLOPES:
The Woodfuel Crisis in the Third World
STRUCTURES OF PATRIARCHY:
State, Community and Household in Modernising Asia (editor)
*Also published by Macmillan
Women, Poverty and
Ideology in Asia
Contradictory Pressures, Uneasy Resolutions
Edited by
Haleh Afshar
Department of Politics
University of York
and
Bina Agarwal
Institute of Economic Growth
Delhi, India
M
MACMILLAN
© Haleh Afshar and Bina Agarwal 1989
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied
or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance
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issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place,
London WC1E 7DP.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution
and civil claims for damages.
First published 1989
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Women, poverty and ideology in Asia:
contradictory pressures, uneasy
resolutions.
1. Asia. Society. Role of women
I. Afshar, Haleh, 1944- II. Agarwal, Bina
305.4'2'095
ISBN 978-0-333-44409-2 ISBN 978-1-349-20757-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20757-2
Contents
List of Tables vi
Preface vii
Notes on the Editors and Contributors viii
Introduction
Haleh Afshar and Bina Agarwal 1
1 Purdah and Poverty in Pakistan
Farida Shaheed 17
2 Women in the Work and Poverty Trap in Iran
Haleh Afshar 43
3 Women, Land and Ideology in India
Bina Agarwal 70
4 Petty Trading and Gender Segregation in Urban South
India
Johanna Lessinger 99
5 The Ideology of Femininity and Women's Work in a
Fishing Community of South India
Kalpana Ram 128
6 Internal Colonisation and the Fate of Female Divers in
Cheju Island, South Korea
Hae-Joang Cho 148
7 Women's Work, Male Domination and Controls over
Income among Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka
Rachel Kurian 178
8 Export-Oriented Industries and Women Workers in Sri
Lanka
Kumudhini Rosa 196
9 Poverty, Ideology, and Women Export Factory Workers
in South-East Asia
Gillian H. C. Foo and Linda Y. C. Lim 212
Index 235
v
List of Tables
1.1 Female labour force by major industry, 1961-81 24
1.2 Female labour force by major occupational groups,
1961-81 25
1.3 Distribution of pieceworkers by work organisation and
daily income 30
1.4 Distribution of women workers by their percentage
contribution to monthly household earnings 31
1.5 Distribution of women workers by differences in male
and female aggregate earnings within the family 32
1.6 Monthly earnings from home-based piecework from
outside employment 33
1.7 Distribution of pieceworkers by age group and opinions
on purdah observance 34
3.1 Women's customary access to land in India 76
3.2 Marriage location and post-marital residence in India 81
3.3 Percentage of rural population below poverty line 91
5.1 Average incomes of women in untrained work 143
8.1 Minimum wage levels determined by GCEC Wages
Board 204
vi
Preface
Working together on this book, with scholars dispersed across four
continents, has been a difficult, often taxing, but in the end a
rewarding and worthwhile experience. Conceived and initiated in
1986, the book has grown through meetings, correspondence and
international calls between the contributors and us over the past two
years. As editors, we have also visited some of the authors, and have
met together in England and India several times to pull together the
threads of the arguments that bind this volume.
While most of the contributors are academics by profession, all are
also active feminists, and many have been involved in long, difficult,
and sometimes dangerous struggles against measures that condemn
large numbers of women to subordination and poverty. In many
senses, the interrelationships between ideology, economy and gen
der, as examined here, are in the nature of explorations, and we hope
that the readers will carry the debate forward through the specific
areas of their work and action.
We are grateful to the authors for comments on the introduction,
although responsibility for the final version is ours alone. We would
also like to thank Maurice Dodson and our families without whose
constant support, help and encouragement this book would never
have been completed.
HALEH AFSHAR
BINA AGARWAL
vii
Notes on the Editors and
Contributors
Haleh Afshar was born and raised in Iran, where she worked as a civil
servant and a journalist. She teaches in the Department of Politics
and the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of York. She is
currently working with Muslim immigrant women in West Yorkshire
and has edited Women, Work and Ideology (1985), Women, State and
Ideology (1987) and Iran: a Revolution in Turmoil (1985).
Bina Agarwal is a Professor at the Institute of Economic Growth,
Delhi. She was educated at the universities of Cambridge and Delhi.
She has been a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Development
Studies, and a Research Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit,
both at the University of Sussex. Her extensive writings include
articles on technological change in agriculture, the political economy
of the woodfuel and environment crisis, poverty and the position of
women in India and Asia, and several books: Cold Hearths and
Barren Slopes: The Woodfuel Crisis in the Third World (1986),
Structures of Patriarchy: State, Community and Household in Mod
ernising Asia (ed., 1988) and Mechanisation in Indian Agriculture
(1983). She is currently a member of the Commonwealth Expert
Group on Structural Adjustment and Women. She is also active in
the women's movement and the environment movement in India.
Hae-Joang Cho teaches Cultural Anthropology, Korean Society and
Gender Studies at the University of Yonsei, Seoul, South Korea. She
is a graduate of History from Yonsei University and has a PhD in
Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is
actively engaged in the feminist movement in Korea and is a member
of a group called 'To hana-iii Munwha' (Alternative Culture). She is
currently working on a book with a feminist perspective tentatively
entitled 'Women and Men in Korea'.
Gillian Hwei-Chuan Foo is a consultant on family planning program
mes in Bangladesh. She is a Malaysian who graduated from Benning
ton College and has a PhD in Population Planning from the Universi-
Vlll
Notes on the Editors and Contributors ix
ty of Michigan in 1987. She has worked with international family
planning agencies in Malaysia and Thailand.
Rachel Kurian is a Lecturer in the Labour and Development
Programme at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. Her
research has been on the position of women in plantations in the
Caribbean and Asia, on which she has published a book, Women
Workers in the Sri Lankan Plantation Sector: An Historical and
Contemporary Analysis (1982) and is currently working on a book on
women and plantations in the Caribbean, with special reference to
Trinidad and Barbados. Since 1982 she has had field experience in Sri
Lanka, the Philippines, Barbados, Trinidad, Ecuador and Colombia.
Johanna Lessinger is a Research Associate at the Southern Asian
Institute, Columbia University, in New York. She is a social anthro
pologist and a political activist. Her major interests are in politics,
economic behaviour and women's activism in Third World societies.
She has done research in the Caribbean, India and among Indian
immigrants in the United States. Her most recent work is an edited
volume Perspectives in US Marxist Anthropology, produced with
David Hakken for Westview Press. She has taught Anthropology and
Women's Studies.
Linda Yuen-Ching Lim teaches at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor. She is a Singaporean with degrees in Economics from the
University of Cambridge (BA), Yale (MA) and Michigan (PhD
1978). She has taught at Swarthmore College and the National
University of Singapore. She is a specialist on multinationals, trade,
industrial development, labour and women's issues in South-East
Asia, and has consulted frequently on these subjects for various
international development agencies (e.g. ILO, UNCTC, UNIDO,
ESCAP, World Bank, OECD, ODI London.) She is the co-author of
three books and more than fifty published articles, about one-third of
which deal with women's work in developing countries.
Kalpana Ram is currently completing her doctoral dissertation in the
Anthropology School of Pacific Studies, Australian National Uni
versity. She has undertaken fieldwork among the Mukkuwar fishing
community in 1982-3 and again in 1983-4. The focus of the research
is on the interrelations between caste, class and gender in the context
of change in the labour process.